So
by esren
Summary: Pulp Friction and what comes next
1. So Small

"So, "

The simple word hung in the air, suspended from invisible threads tense with undeclared meaning. Myriad rationales, confusing things, were communicated in that comma; indecision, expectation and the friction produced by two very different personalities fighting to steer the ungainly boat they found themselves in together.

Rory had sensed him before she saw him advancing on her desk as if he was a man on a mission. A good thing, that sixth sense about his presence because it had afforded her a modicum of time to steel herself for what seemed to be an inevitable conversation. Light, breezy, casual she admonished herself, keep it cas...her newest catch word. She schooled her features to mild interest her eyes still seemingly glued to the glowing computer screen in front of her and her fingers flying with a will of their own.

"So..." she let her own word hang there from strings of calculated indifference as if she were really only half paying attention to the nuance of his posture, the rhythm of his speech, those hands that gestured and spoke volumes that his voice did not elucidate. It was a lie of course but he didn't need to know that. This was light; this was string less fun... THIS was a pitched battle that only the clever and determined would win. She wasn't giving an inch that he didn't take by force.

"So...did I see you on State Street with...?" It was less of a question and more of an opening for her to interject what he was almost certain would be a green tinged rant. Logan caught himself forgetting to breathe out as he waited for her response. When it came it was surprisingly less than illusory.

"Yeah." The tone was matter of fact, neutral, a confirmation of a direct question, and an epitome of word economy that gave him nowhere to go but deeper into this proverbial pit.

"Right." He frowned slightly but quickly recovered "So...you saw me on State Street with...?" Again not a question and if he was waiting for her to chose the direction of this conversation he was left holding the ball after another cursory reply that implied distinct disinterest in the topic.

"Yep." Keep it brief she thought, answer the question and move on no use lingering on the sharp, deliberately nameless thing that had sliced through her in that instant of recognition.

"So?" The question mark was all but etched in the air between them and begged for a retort but she stubbornly held back the words that wanted to fall from her tongue in rapid succession. Those words wouldn't solve this quandary; they would only serve to give him a reason to run.

"So." It was as blank a canvas as she could make it and still utter a syllable.

He considered how to ask the delicate question and still walk the tight rope they had constructed for themselves with the utmost care. "Are we still good?"

He struggled to sound like the answer didn't matter, after all he was just making polite chit chat, smoothing over an unfortunate incident that he hated to think would derail their budding but undefined relationship.

Truth was she had wanted to give in to temptation and let her mother bean him with that rock she had suggested. A glance flicked in his direction where she tried to gage his concern over the matter. She didn't get much though, if this were a contest of poker faces she had no doubt he would beat her hands down. If she wanted to stay in the game she couldn't let him know that she had wanted to storm across the street and yank the flirtatious giggling bimbo up by her perfectly highlighted hair and cut her to shreds with a few well-placed insults.

She swallowed the bitter pill that she had chosen and played out the hand "Absolutely."

Her tone was breezy, bright and completely insincere, add to it the flash of pearly whites and he left with an even more obscured view of what lay beneath her deliberately cheery surface.

"Really?" he must have sounded surprised and skeptical because she jumped to defend her statement with more of that diffident tone.

"Logan we both agreed no strings attached, remember?" Her voice held a hint of censure as if she were irked that he was making her repeat herself.

"I remember. I was just checking to see how well you remember." It irritated him that she seemed to be questioning his own memory of a conversation that was engraved crystal clear in his mind. He had thought at the time that it was a dream come true, a girl like Rory Gilmore; sweet, smart, witty AND willing to forgo the usual need for definition and commitment that generally traveled hand in hand with those characteristics. He had gone with the invitation figuring it was one of those carried away in the heat of the moment impulses that the light of day and rational thought would have her discarding without a backward glance once she came to her senses.

The problems started when she followed through with a more pugnacious spirit than he would have predicted. They had done the whole get together just for sex thing and it was great, off the charts fantastic actually. That was all fine and good; he had done the no strings sex thing plenty of times. The worries started when he found her creeping into his thoughts at odd moments, when he saw a coffee cart or a library book that reminded him of her. When he had given in to impulse and snuck her in to the dining hall with the key he wasn't supposed to have just to see her smile like a kid in the candy store over cocoa puffs and ice cream. That was distinctly unusual in his world of no stings. Wining, dining and fancy parties were his usual modus operandi, trips to the newspaper office in hopes of running in to her and wanting to drop everything and kiss her senseless every time she came into sight were not. Despite her rather accomplished play acting he saw the occasional glances, knew that at times she chafed against the rules that she herself had set and he waited, waited for her to break that invisible barrier of half truths that lay between them. He waited for her to step foot across that line in the sand and challenge him to defend his statements about the type of guy he really was. Yet days, weeks had passed and he was still left waiting for that other shoe to drop. There was no attempt on her part to change the boundaries or claim more of him than she had taken in that first night of their agreement. He waited because he'd be damned if he'd be the first one to break.

"I remember perfectly." Her smile didn't falter and her eyes swiveled quickly back to her story as if the conversation were just a slight distraction and not a contractual discussion at all.

"Okay that's good to hear." He'd gotten what he came for, absolution. Relief should have flooded his brain, allowed him to breathe easier but instead that weighty ball of doubt, guilt, and unnamed desires cinched a notch tighter in his chest. He should have exited then, Logan Huntzberger prided himself on being an excellent card player, a man who knew when to hold 'em and knew when to fold 'em. He should have stuck with his golden rule...always quit while you are ahead.

He should have quit the table but he didn't, something about this felt unfinished like there was more to say than a few stilted adverbs. He just wasn't sure what that more entailed. His lips opened and he heard his voice spill out "So..."

"Oh, we're not going to do the so thing again are we?" Her tone was teasing, the tense part of the conversation apparently over in her mind.

He looked at her half smile and internally shook himself. She had done it again. She had surprised him, knocked him off balance. He had expected her to lambaste him for what had felt like infidelity the second he had recognized her across the busy street but instead she was teasing him. Playing the game exactly by the rules they had set, something that he was suddenly finding himself loath to do.

She flashed him a playful smile that had her eyes dancing and it seemed that was enough to goad him on to reckless action

His hands had taken on a life of their own, a habit they had of running a bit before the cart and getting overly exuberant in the face of impending adventure "No, promise, no more Sos. Will you take an um?"

"Depends where is it leading." She let a little smile play on her lips and wondered at what point she had become so good at bluffing.

"Um...are you busy or do you feel like grabbing a cup of coffee." Funny, when he had seen her sitting here he had just wanted to get the formality of confrontation out of the way, smooth whatever irritation she might feel. It had been a very clear objective but somehow in the five-minute conversation he had completely lost sight of the endpoint. It was something that seemed to be happening all too often of late when those sea blue eyes danced their merry jig towards him and her voice called to him like a mermaid's song drawing him ever closer to drowning in the watery depths.

"Why do you have the master key to a Starbucks or something?"

Her voice held that lilting note of humor now so he sent her his signature the world is my oyster smirk and pitched his voice to match her playful tone "No I just thought we'd walk in and pay."

"Wow, old school." Inside she was dancing as she saw that glimmer of possibility, "Sure lets go." They were past the worst of the conversation and this thing they were doing would live to see another day she shrugged off the weight of the what ifs and rose from her seat.

"Okay, let's go."


	2. So Dangerous

A/N: Wow...Thanks so much all for the great reviews, your thoughts and ideas are part of what keeps me inspired to write. I'm not sure where this story will go, just had a few thoughts flying around in my brain since the last episode that sort of begged to be put to paper. For those of you who read The Point of Being Young have no fear, I consider this a totally different line of possibility so it won't interfere with my dedication to that story. You know the whole the roads diverged thing... I hope to have the next update up for PBY tomorrow. Happy reading!

So, this was what the grey area felt like.

The blaring music filtered out of the main room and could be heard even before they had stepped through the doorway and its irony did not escape Rory. _Stuck in the Middle With You_, it qualified as either the quintessence of satire or some wicked deities' idea of a damn good joke. Stuck in the middle; that sort of summed up her whole life at the moment or at least the part of her life that involved her vague, amorphous and staunchly uncommitted relationship with Logan Huntzberger.

She was here with Robert but she couldn't stop her eyes from flitting across the faces that they passed as they entered party central. Couldn't quite stop the twinge of disappointment when she saw Logan across the room with a petite version of Tarantino's Bride. It was that green-eyed monster within that had her thinking catty venomous thoughts about a girl she had never met, comparing in classic girl style and deciding that her outfit was definitely the more flattering of the two. The good Rory, the one that worked hard in school and humored Kirk and ran home to comfort her mother when she needed her and liked Paris despite her vitriolic nature flinched at this inner diatribe but the other Rory, the one that wanted to shrug off the shackles of her sweet angel persona and ride in cars with boys and tempt fate by jumping off ten story platforms and risk her heart just to say she had...the Rory that wanted Logan Huntzberger for herself reveled in the tiny moment where he saw her and an emotion much like jealousy flitted across his features.

She found she couldn't quite step away from the thrill of that and only hoped that the two Rory's would one day be reconciled, that she might in fact disprove the odds and have her cake and eat it too. She put a smile on her face and greeted Logan's friends as if she belonged amongst them denying that tiny part of herself that felt like a deceitful imposter.

The party was in full swing and Logan was feeling just the slight buzz of tipsiness. He'd probably pass the straight-line test but he figured if someone asked him the meaning of serendipity it might come out a garbled and melodramatic mess and engender a soliloquy that would undoubtedly involve an inappropriate mention of a certain dark haired girl who had just entered the party in the company of one of his so-called friends. He'd seen her across the crowded room and something in him had tensed when he saw Robert come into view at her elbow.

They were talking, joking with Finn and then Colin. Rory was laughing and he saw Robert glance at her covetously and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to wipe that playful smirk from Robert's face preferably with his fist.

"Lets get a drink." The comment was directed at the girl at his side but his eyes were still glued to the one in the short plaid skirt who stood across the room. The girl had the audacity to laugh, to smile, to make witty remarks that amused those close enough to hear them drop from her lips and she didn't so much as look in his direction.

Armed with a drink he all but stormed towards the group with Whitney in tow and his face set in a consciously nonchalant smirk.

He smiled and made an expansive gesture with his drink sloshing in one hand "The gang's all here." Inside he seethed, she wasn't part of the gang what right did she have to look so much like she belonged here, with his friends...with him...not with that ass Robert who didn't deserve to touch the ground she had walked on. He took a deep soothing sip of the amber liquid in his glass letting the fire of it burn those bitter words from his throat.

He made the introductions his eyes never leaving hers. Those calm blue eyes that said that she was calling his bluff that she wasn't going to be the first to lose her balance on this tight rope they walked.

He smiled at her but she didn't flinch and her facade didn't break. She smiled back and then looked at Robert and he admitted silently that she had won the round. He retreated. It was the only thing to do when you were out gunned and out manned. Rally, regroup and recoup your losses.

He drank, he danced, he flirted with that piece of his brain for which those activities were second nature but his eyes watched her, something hot and uncomfortable and binding growing in his chest until he was restless with that pent up energy. He had to do something. She was making a mockery of him or everything he claimed to be at least. He needed to prove to her, to himself that he could do this.

He stalked towards her table when he saw an opening snagging another drink on the way. The iced glass felt good against his flushed skin. "Hey Ace, having a good time?" he forced the question and felt the irritation smolder and flare when she met his eyes steadily.

"I am, thanks." She caught the slight narrowing of his eyes and felt a little thrill of triumph. Something was eating at him and had him making pointed small talk while his eyes tried to reduce her to the small pieces he could understand in a girl playmate. She tried a friendly smile and was rewarded with a tensing of his jaw. She had never been very good at deception or dissemblance, her mom said her face was too honest, too transparent but she must be getting better, either that or he was past seeing what she so carefully camouflaged with witty remarks and nonchalant body language.

His smile felt glued in place "Good, that's good, me too I'm having a good time too." He realized suddenly that he had answered a question she hadn't posed and took a long sip of the cold liquid in his glass in hopes that it would soothe that ragged irritation in his throat.

"Good." Her tone was polite as if she were simply biding time with him until her date returned.

That smile set his teeth on edge and he felt the irrational urge to chuck the heavy glass at something that would make a satisfying crash mixed with even more foolish urge to kiss her into capitulation until that polite smile was nothing but a crumpled memory "Yes it is good."

He heard himself asking like a jealous suitor where she knew Robert and felt like a complete idiot when she made it crystal clear that the only times they had met had been in his presence. What a snake that Robert, sneaking in and snatching his girl right from under his nose the minute he wasn't looking. He took another deep draught as that dangerous thought registered...his girl? Since when? Rather than think about that he went on the attack.

"He's kind of a jerk." Okay, maybe not the best method of distraction and he could tell that something had struck an off note with her when she gave him a funny look.

"Excuse me?" it was a blatant where the hell do you get off kind of question and he bristled at the fact that he deserved it.

"Robert, he's kind of a jerk. Haven't you noticed he's kind of a jerk?" he barreled on. There was no stopping now.

"No." her answer was short and showed no prevarication.

"Huh..." he tried to get a handle on the insane urge to drag her into a corner and possess her, wipe any trace of Robert from her skin. He managed to hold it in check for all of the two seconds it took to meet her eyes. It was the utterly calm challenge there that broke him.

" Night's young." It was as much a challenge to himself as to her.

Before he had time to talk himself out of it he had her by the arm and was dragging her across the room. Giving in to that animalistic beast within him that wanted to claim her as his own. The second they had cleared the dance floor he spun towards her and kissed her like there was no tomorrow. Mindless to their surroundings he let himself sink into her lips, be transported by that little whimper of hers that drove him wild and made him forget every stupid commitment phobic comment he had ever made. That is until she slammed on the brakes and pushed him back.

She darted a look back at the dance floor and it had his blood racing triple time in anger, at her, at himself. She was like an addiction, one night without her and he wanted to kill anyone who so much as looked in her direction. Wanted to beat his chest and announce to the world that she was off limits. He took a ragged breath and tried desperately to keep the boat from capsizing to somehow find an even keel in the thrash of the storm. He struggled for conversation. "Right, so how have you been?"

"I've been fine." She was drowning in those warm chocolate eyes but she forced herself to think about the question he had asked, to focus on the words and not those tempting lips that spoke them.

"How's school." He had no idea where the words were coming from considering that all the blood had drained from his head about a minute ago.

"School's hard." She was speaking but all she could see were his eyes, all she could hear was her own labored breathing and then she was caught up in the frenzied chemistry that always sparked between them. Only this time it was tinged with something more, something desperate that was only barely balanced by an equal portion of denial. He didn't like that she was here with some one other than him, she'd seen it in the flare of the eyes, the irritation in his stance, those ridiculous comments about Robert being a jerk. And somehow his jealousy fueled something in her like a dangerous drug the adrenaline of it made the kiss all the more electric. Finally she came to her senses. She couldn't give in this easily, then he won, then she had no solid ground left to stand on and he would know it.

She pushed him away with as much will as she could muster. "Logan, we can't do this here."

Those powerful eyes burned into her "You're right let's go." He couldn't believe the words were falling from his lips but he was driven by something beyond reason now.

"Go where?" her eyes were challenging him now, ripping at his mask, testing his endurance.

"Your place, my place, we'll take a train to New York and spend the night at the Plaza." It was out of his mouth before he could stop it. He didn't care where he just wanted her all to himself wanted to burn any thought of another out of her system by force if necessary.

"We can't just leave, we have dates." Hers was the voice of reason and it made him all but growl in frustration. Most girls coveted his attention but this one seemed to always be pulling down some new wall, picking at some piece of him until it crumbled, pulling him apart piece by tiny piece until he was left with nothing but rubble, the ruins of his defenses piled around him.

He snapped, "I don't like this."

"Like what?" somehow she held it together despite the fact that her heart was racing. Would this be it then, the hard won moment where he let go, where he gave in to the possibilities?

"You here with Robert." He despised the words even as they fell into the space between them.

"You're here with Whitney." There was that damning truth. Stark and irrefutable.

"I know."

"So what's the problem?" She wasn't backing down from this, she had to make him see that he wanted all of her and that he couldn't get it unless he was willing to reciprocate with the same.

It all bubbled up and out of him before he could put a name to the morass of emotion "The problem is you're here with Robert and it's bothering me and I don't like that it's bothering me."

"Sorry, do you want us to leave?" She offered him exactly the solution that she knew he didn't want. Goaded him a step closer to the brink.

His voice turned a reckless and beseeching "No, I want I us to leave, you and me."

"I can't do that." It was a matter of fact statement of principles, principles that he hadn't often encountered in one of his bed partners. He damned himself, he had known she was trouble the minute she had laid into him outside her room that first day about mistreating her friend, but she had made him laugh and he had enjoyed watching the pique flush her face and those blue eyes snap with wit. He had known he should stay away from her but his damnable impetuous heart hadn't listened and now he was in too deep to get out without capsizing.

Frustration and hurt spoke "Oh, you want to spend the rest of the night with Robert instead of me."

"I came here with Robert." Again with that stubborn indisputable logic that she seemed to be clinging to like a life raft.

He was beyond reason "So dump Robert, I hate Robert."

Now she spoke in exasperation knowing that she had pushed his buttons as far as she could tonight without compromising herself "He's your friend."

"So what I still hate him." This was spoken in the petulant tone of a six year old that has been denied his favorite toy.

There was an ounce of hope in her mind, hoping this was the day they ended this ruse, stopped playing the game "Logan you're the one who said..."

"I know what I said." He tried not to see it but he didn't like the look of disappointment so poorly masked in her expressive eyes, didn't like the fact that he felt like a cad despite the fact that she had made no requests and he had made no promises. It was a dangerous woman that wielded such power with a simple stiffening of shoulders, blanking of eyes, tightening of lips...a dangerous woman indeed.

Hope died at the look in his eyes that said he wasn't ready for surrender. She hated every step but she forced herself to say the words and take the steps, she would hate herself, would hate what she was left with if she didn't "Okay then, I have to go, I have a date. Enjoy the rest of the party."

Logan watched her go and despised the unfamiliar twist in his gut as he watched her accept a drink and smile at another boy.

The night ended badly, Whitney none too pleased at the fact that he had dragged another girl off into a dark secluded corner that was unfortunately not dark enough or secluded enough to hid their clandestine activities had abandoned him shortly after to head home with her friend Josie.

He had proceeded to make a fairly good attempt at drinking himself into a fugue but had been rather spectacularly unsuccessful. This failure left him with the painful memory of sitting on the bench across from the window to her room watching her as she prepared for sleep. Watching her emerge from the bathroom dressed in those clingy sleep pants that he found oddly more erotic than the usual bits of silk and lace that adorned most of his conquests statuesque bodies. He felt a nearly palpable sense of loss when she closed the blinds shutting him out and her lights winked off. He wanted to be there with her, tucked in behind those blinds in the warm sensual darkness with her.

The slap of that desire was made worse by the fact that he knew he could have what he wanted, knew that he could knock on her window and she would let him in. It was the price of entrance that had him frozen in indecision. He knew from their face off earlier in the night that she was in for the hand and he either had to ante up or get out of the game. He might be the son of a wealthy man but he was a pauper when it came to emotional currency. He didn't know if he had the balance in his account to cover the damage of an emotional entanglement with Rory Gilmore.

He sat there for a long time in thought before he headed back to his own empty bed holding on with miserly hands to the most valuable thing he had to give. Not yet ready to gamble with his heart.

Rory had seen him on the bench had watched him for a while as she went about her routine getting ready for bed. He had been there huddled against the chill of the spring air when she had deliberately closed the blinds and plunged the room into darkness and she had watched him still through those slits. She waited for a long time as the hours waned towards morning for him to beat back whatever internal demons possessed him and come to her window. She fell asleep waiting and wondered what the morning would bring.

Morning brought surprises.

It was a knock at the door that awakened her and after a few more knocks she surmised that Paris either had some sort of vendetta against her or was not present in the room which left the doorwoman duties to her. Her hair was a shambles and her eyes still puffy with sleep but she was suddenly wide awake when she swung open the door and saw a dressed, pressed and nearly edible looking Logan standing there with two large cups of coffee.

He offered her one that she took without comment, for the moment she felt a little quip less in the face of such an unexpected wake up call.

The stood there in silence for a moment while they weighed each other with their eyes and tried to evaluate the new balance that was struck by this daylight encounter and the events that had led them to this became stark black and white. Finally he spoke. "So... what comes next?"


	3. So Unreal

So, this was what victory tasted like...sweet on the tongue but quickly drowned in the bitterness of bad coffee.

She pondered his words, the balance of what he was offering. There was a brief second looking up at him standing in her doorway that she allowed herself to think that perhaps the strings to the marionettes were not as far from her grasp as she believed. It was a momentary lapse back into the shoes of the idealistic small town girl that still clung to life inside this carefree alter ego she had built for herself. She looked down at his physical offering burning her hand through it's thin paper shell and saw all those things he didn't want her to see, the implied promises, the beginnings of more than just casual sex that burned in the night but left her cold in the morning light, the chance to explore this thing that tainted the air between them and made everything wavy and indistinct.

Then she looked up at him, really looked at the smirk that came readily to his delectable lips and the eyes that were bright mirrors reflecting only what he wanted her to see. The scene came abruptly into focus. His face was a study in composure; all traces of drunken possessive demons and the dejected lonely boy on the bench wiped clean from its malleable surface. He wasn't giving away his secrets so easily in the harsh light of day.

His eyes told her what he was really offering... a gambit. In this careful match they played this was by no means a capitulation but rather a guarded speculation that a chance existed that things could be different... more. There were no promises between them as she supposed there was no honor among thieves. They were playing at the game of chance and this roll of the dice involved only the possibility, however small, that maybe he was more than he believed himself to be, that she was less than he believed her to be, that they could meet in the happy medium and that would be enough for a while.

It wasn't enough, not by any reckoning but there was a part of her that couldn't stop fighting for this long shot. She liked this boy, more than she should, more than lessons learned at her mother's expense should have allowed her to. It was the caprice of attraction at work, that strange and unfathomable beast called chemistry that rendered perfectly good minds useless and spoke the less sophisticated but no less powerful language of the body. This type of chemistry had little to do with science and a lot to do with the unpredictable parameters of two personalities who might seem to the world of odds makers to exist in entirely different states but surprised the critics when they met and produced an unexpected reaction.

He watched her analyzing through veiled eyes using all of his considerable skills to keep the churning, breath clogging mixture of fear and anxiety from slipping out into the open. He was torn by indecision, half afraid that she would walk away from this thing between them and half afraid that she would stay and play it out.

He was offering her all that he could offer with a clear conscience knowing that a centimeter more would be a lie, a promise he didn't know if he could keep. Any other girl and he would have made that promise blind to the repercussions. He would have told her exactly what she wanted to hear, exactly what she needed to hear in order to convince her to stay until he was ready for her to leave.

He had in fact come here with that plan foremost in his mind but the instant the door had swung open on her sweet sleep-heavy eyes and he had seen that flash of welcome followed so closely by a quicksilver flow of barely contained disappointment he found that those glib words would not come.

It was an odd Gordian knot. He stood face to face with one of the few girls on his very inclusive list that he was not ready to relinquish and just at the pivotal point where his well-honed charm should have served its highest purpose he couldn't find it in himself to let those facile promises flow from his silver tongue like wine that would readily deaden her senses to the reality of his shortcomings. There was a small and unexplored part of him that cared too much for her opinion and her esteem. A piece of the gallant character the he staunchly believed he did not possess that would rather see her walk away than be responsible for staining those immaculate sky-like eyes with nihilistic disdain.

Logan was a cynic. He had learned early the principles of Darwin and cut his baby teeth on Nietzsche, Machiavelli and Butler, he believed in the inherent ruthlessness of his fellow man and that most things were exactly as they appeared, no better and no worse. He placed very little store in the jejune belief in true love and the Disney version of happily ever after. It wasn't credible reality, at least not in the murky world of selfish motives and hedonistic principles that he lived and breathed in.

In his more pragmatic moments he found it ironically laughable that he was caught in this web of his own making after having on so many occasions stated his unequivocal aversion to starry eyed virginal good girls, they were tempting on the surface but they never ceased to change the rules, to shift the ground you stood on and always want for more. He usually preferred his playmates brainless and scheming and felt not a shred of guilt when things inevitably exploded in a shower of flame reminiscent of the Hindenburg.

Yet here he stood, the self-professed agnostic, offering some intangible increment of himself, knowing that she was in equal measure the poison that sickened him and the remedy that cured him.

He hadn't detected the changes at first, tiny as they were but under the microscope of jealousy he had could see them now, the minute tears and frays in the fabric of his existence. Something in him had altered in indescribable ways since the day that the perfectly antithetic Rory Gilmore had waltzed into his field of view like a swirling gust of hot cleansing wind that kicked up the settled pattern of his life and sent tiny dust devils to spinning inside him uncovering things that he had buried in the depths for good reasons that had to do with self-preservation and denial and abhorrence of vulnerability.

It had been a mistake from the beginning to let her in, to follow her down this pitfall-laden road to self-imposed hell but he hadn't been able to stop himself. Hadn't been able to keep from playing the mental game of Monopoly with such a worthy opponent. He hadn't really understood what he had to lose until he found himself here standing in front of her doorway on the brink of bankruptcy the fate of his last holdings hanging on the balance of her decision and in that bated breath he knew he wanted her to choose him, wanted her body and her mind to be his. Knew also that it was her choice to make.

Rory watched him for a moment before making her decision. She took another sip of the coffee hoping that by some divine intervention it would be better this time and then grimaced slightly, at least she could always count on one thing in her life...coffee, it had never failed her as panacea, problem solver or conversation starter.

She quirked an eyebrow at Logan "Well it seems like we should start with the glaring issue."

He went rigid and cursed his impulsive appearance at her door... it was clear now, all this silence had just been a preamble, she was going to make him spell it out, paint in bright colors his failures and his faults so she could no longer ignore them or excuse them. He struggled to force words past his dry throat and shrugged nonchalantly "Your call Ace."

There was a descending thud of silence that felt like the ominous drumbeat signaling an army to its battle stations.

Then she smiled and air flooded back through his lungs in a wave "Well, if you are going to try to bribe me with coffee more often then you seriously need some lessons on where to get it because I'm not sure how long I can survive on this swill. Battery acid might just be preferable if it came with caffeine." She waved the accused coffee cup in his direction.

He was still for a split second as if searching for some ultimatum in her eyes and then he grinned that full wattage Logan Huntzberger grin that said in no uncertain terms that the world was his to rule should he deign to do so. She wasn't running, she had accepted his compromise and she was staying, that was all that mattered. He would think about the relief that inundated him as her words fell later, much later. Right now all he wanted to do was kiss her senseless.

He retorted with his signature teasing tone "You know I think we could probably find a back alley somewhere that sells caffeine in it's purest unadulterated form, you could just snort the stuff and get it over without the hassle of finding good coffee."

Rory shook her head sadly as she took a step back from the door. "Poor uneducated fellow. Clearly you do not understand the importance of a good caffeine delivery device."

"You can teach me..." He stepped into the opening she had created and snaked a possessive hand around her waist pulling her abruptly flush with his chest. He met her eyes and let her see the barely controlled lust that raged there just beyond the veil. He took the coffee cup from her hand and set in on the desk next to the door before he brought a hand up to cup the back of her head and his voice ground out "...later."

She only had time to blink once before his mouth smashed down on hers and had her catapulting into that raging sea of raw desire that always seemed to surge in her when he was touching her or looking at her with those eyes that stripped her of all pretenses. She shuddered and forgot all about games and weighing the risks. She battled back from shocked submission to slake her own lust, sinking her fingers into his shoulders and pulling him closer, tighter to her humming body. He was like a drug that she just couldn't' seem to get enough of, a drug that swamped all her rationalizations and brushed aside her inhibitions and left her starving for the thrill that only he could give her.

He slammed the door behind them with his foot the sound a jarring counterpoint to the swell of desire that obliterated all but the frenetic tempo of blood beating in their veins. He lifted her slightly and spun in one motion so that she was trapped between the hard wood surface and the planes of his body. He held her captive with his tongue, his lips, and the whispered words that burned hot in the shell of her ear and made her insides tremble in crazed response. Her hands raked through his hair as she kissed back with everything she had. He lifted his head away from her for an instant to pull her shirt over her head staring into her dilated pupils. He shuddered a little when her hands started their frantic dance on his flesh, yanking at his shirt until he pulled away slightly to shuck it over his head.

They stared at each for a long moment panting in joint frenzy and then their mouths met again in a mind erasing kiss all maddening mouths and twisting tongues. She arched against him, her nipples hard as tiny pebbles against his chest and he dropped his skilled mouth to the hollow above her clavicle before trailing lower, teasing the skin above her breast and then tracing a circle around her nipple with that agile tongue. She gasped and writhed against him causing his own blood pressure to rocket as she squirmed. Before he could stop them her quick dexterous fingers were on his zipper, dragging it down in an uncomfortably erotic motion that had spots circling in his vision. Then those delicate hands still hot from the burn of the coffee cup were slipping aside the fabric of his boxers and cupping him in their smooth warmth.

"Ror.." he pushed both their weight hard against the door at her back as he gave a little shudder at the ecstasy of the feeling of her hands on that sensitive flesh. She stroked up to the root, down, slowly but with a pressure that his blood pounding in his ears. He set his teeth and lifted his head with some effort before very deliberately grasping her wrists and pulling her hands from his body. He pinned both her hands above her head against the door so that he could hold them with one hand. With the other he shucked off the legs of the pants hanging open at his waist and then pulled a condom from the wallet pocket before discarding them in a pile on the floor, he was too far gone for slow and steady this time. He pushed down the waistband of her pants and then helped disentangle them as she kicked them off. With his eyes intent on her he ripped open the condom with his teeth and looked down to slide it on to his stiff erection.

His gaze snapped back up to meet hers and her eyes swirling liquid blue caught at him, sucked him into their depths like a maelstrom. This time when her kissed her it was with desperate gentleness edged with impatient need, invitation, asking her to join him, to ride this rollercoaster with him of her own free will. To choose him. When he saw her acquiescence shimmering in those aquamarine depths he lifted her slightly poised her above him and then leaned his weight against the door as she slid down on to him with excruciating slowness, her heat surrounding him, consuming him, lust beating in his blood as he struggled to remain still.

She was deaf to all but the screaming of nerve endings, blind to everything but the light absorbing black of his pupils as they pinned her with their intensity. In a passion induced furor her body responded without thought, bent to the will of instinct more primal than thought or reason. She raised one leg to curl around his hip with a little gasp at the sensations the movement elicited. When he shuddered against her she raised the other leg and locked them together behind him so that he was bearing all of her weight as he pushed her back against the door. This shift of weight had her sinking deeper on to him and they took a deep trembling breath almost in sync before they began to move together.

He wanted to take every shudder, every shiver, and every quake of her body against his and absorb them through his skin, let them play their wild havoc with his soul. He wanted to give back even a modicum of the illicit pleasure that coursed through him as he pushed into her willing body, driven by the hums and moans of pleasure, the bite of her nails as they dug into his back anchoring her against his onslaught.

She keened a high pitched strangled scream of frustrated near release and then panted into his ear "Please, Logan...harder...just...almost..."

He drove them both to the peak of release and then held them there teetering on the edge until the world exploded in a shower of sparks and light around him and he felt the last snap of his restraint as she squeezed him with her legs pulling him as deep as possible and her head rolled from side to side against the door as her body convulsed around him. He held back that tiny habitually reserved part of himself from complete surrender but this time it was a close thing and he held on only by extreme will. He was close so close to losing everything in this girl who clung and shivered against him.

The physical satiation came with a buzzing dizziness, a blinding wave of red that obscured all but his vision of those luminescent blue eyes. He tasted the salty tang of blood as he bit into his lip holding back the scream of release from it's full potential as a barbaric shout of possession and swallowing all but the groans of pleasure. As the crest of passion broke over them he felt himself being dragged by its strength onto the sand, left weak and limp in the wake of the ebb of rampaging desire. He dropped his head to her chest and focused on breathing.

There was a moment of heavy silence broken only by the rhythm of inhale and exhale. When thought returned to the blank slate of his mind he pondered what beast had overtaken him, driven him to this extreme. He prided himself on being a generous and gentle lover, not one who threw a girl up against her door in broad daylight and allowed his brutish side to take over in the heat of passion. He felt... guilty. She had certainly consented, been an equal partner even but surely this was not what she had been expecting.

Her legs slid from his hips but his head remained bent over her. He was contemplating words of apology, fearing the damning look in her eye when he felt the first quiver of her chest beneath him. It was accompanied by a foreign and at first unrecognizable sound that rumbled and echoed in his ear and his heart stiffened at the thought that he had somehow driven her to tears. He cringed but then forced himself to raise his head with trepidation to look into those blue eyes that saw too much of him.

What he saw there left him flabbergasted, speechless... she was laughing. The mirth rose up to her eyes that danced in a sort of hopeless surrender to the whims of merriment, her lips had curved and her torso was shaking now with the quiet peals of amusement.

He found himself beguiled by the impish smile, lured by that inviting melody of her laugh and his own lips assumed an imitation of the expression.

Finally she gained enough control over her giddiness to speak "That was one hell of a wake up call." She said her voice tinged with humor. "Almost makes up for the abominable beverage masquerading as coffee."

He grinned now sort of amazed at the lightness that followed in the wake of worry, the freedom that came with laughter and of course the bone weakening relaxation that came on the heels of mind-blowing sex. He kissed her then just because he could, because it felt good to laugh and stand naked with her in the light of the day. His smirk was fully resurrected by the time he raised his head.

"So...about that lesson you promised me?"


	4. So Unsure

So, this was limbo, it resembled the wavy distorted image seen in a funhouse mirror.

It had been weeks since day of tacit agreement and she was lost. Rory didn't know where they were, where they were going or even really what she wanted the destination to be. Her internal compass was spinning and couldn't seem to find true north. She was without a guide and without a clue as to how to regain that balance and direction that had once been such an integral part of her approach to life.

They drank coffee, lots of coffee, nothing new in her existence but an act that was now magically imbued with a certain dangerous adrenaline laced edge that had little to do with caffeine content and a great deal to do with the sinuous rise of newly awakened hormones. They ate lunch and the sentences spoken in the silences between casual words were revealing, challenging, the tiny jabs with which they goaded each other to ever-greater heights of folly. Dinners were an exercise in seduction and banter in the newsroom had taken on all the heart racing characteristics of foreplay. Late night ice cream dates were nothing but sheer dance on the edge of reason tightrope walks. Then there were the trysts at all hours of the day, stolen seconds, brief interludes of time captured from the hum drum of everyday life and made into something golden and perfect and evanescent. That transient bubble of elation protected them for that shining moment and they drowned in each other but inevitably the sea of reality rushed back in and toppled all their fancy castles built in the sand. A fitting fate for those dream domiciles built on the ever fluctuating and fluid landscape of limbo.

Rory had always been more of a close the blinds and turn out the lights kind of girl but he made her reckless, made her tingle in broad daylight simply by standing within touching distance as if his force field caressed her even when his hands were behaving themselves. As if that naughty smirk had a power all its own to reach out and set her insides to quivering with a velvet soft stroke of awareness.

It was disconcerting, to say the least, to have her concentration torn to shreds the moment she heard his voice, that throaty little laugh of his that tickled its way up her spine and wiped all but images and sensations of ravishment from her brain, like running an eraser over the blackboard and leaving nothing but smudged indistinct memories of what had once lain there in stark white against black.

She was still quick on the comeback, able to meet his lazy suggestive smiles and that heat in his eyes with a lightening fast turn of phrase and just the right amount of droll wit, luckily that habit had long ago been ingrained at the unconsciously automatic level and came as easy as breathing or walking or drinking coffee...life's other nonnegotiable activities. The games, the innuendo and half voiced feelings hadn't changed...just the rules had.

She just wasn't sure how much longer she could live like this. The thrill of a roller coaster ride was just that for a while, a thrill unsurpassed by every day life. Eventually though even the most avid roller coaster lover wanted to disembark and stand on solid ground. To let the world around them stabilize and crystallize into something that could be seen and touched. Or so she had believed. Logan Huntzberger seemed determined to prove every one of her theories about human nature wrong. He seemed content with their half realized emotions and the push and pull of their interactions. He didn't seem to have any need to stand still and see where they were. He didn't appear to care and therein lay the rub because she was beginning to realize that she did care...too much to continue to ignore the pangs of her heart for the mere promise of short term fulfillment.

She was lost in thought, staring blankly into the dregs of her coffee cup as if she were an old time seer and an explanatory pattern would somehow become apparent in the abstract scatter of muddy grounds that remained against that ivory porcelain. All she had wanted in the heat of that first kiss was to know what it would be like, to jump into the deep end without a life jacket, live reckless, without charts and graphs and color-coding. Her life had long been almost compulsively safe with a few notable exceptions. She liked it that way, cozy, familiar, everything, every thought in it's correct place. No surprises, no murky motivations or uncontrollable endings. Then one day she had found herself missing the surprises, bored with the comfortable and the familiar and yearning to just once have the daring to be the bull in a china shop to buck the yoke of perfectionism that she herself had slung on her shoulders. So she had taken her own self-imposed dare, she had reached out and grabbed that shiny, tempting forbidden fruit, like Eve in the garden, and taken a big bite out of it, willfully ignoring all thought of tomorrow or really anything past that moment of seductive freedom.

Then tomorrow came with all the grace and subtlety of an elephant trying to dance the ballet, and what had seemed clear and bright and etched in brilliant detail faded into ambiguous shapes and vague shades of grey that formed an amorphous fluid, ever shifting landscape of reality that quickly became a maze of confusing firsts. Regrets, mistakes and self-incriminations mixed in equal parts with the highs of adrenaline induced giddiness, unsurpassed euphoria and those few rare moments of surety that for a split second at a time brought some slice of calm to her chaotic life.

Those moments of surety were become fewer and farther between in the past weeks as they grew ever closer and yet with every breath ever farther apart as if some insurmountable yet invisible barrier expanded between them holding them at a constant distance.

She had considered ending it many times. She wasn't stupid, she knew the odds of walking away from the venture unscarred but the nearly palpable energy that flowed between them like a living thing, the way her heart shuddered in her chest for a split second when he touched her before the normal rhythm of her pulse resumed had become addictive. Time and again she had neared the verge of that ultimatum but she had shied away.

When he had shown up at her door looking for the entire world to be a repentant sinner, a career gambler who had tossed in his chips for her and wanted to start fresh with a clean slate. She had seen it as a chance to make this unnamed thing between them into something real. She had denied the thought even as it echoed in her mind but there was a chance that it was the first step on the path to reformation.

She should have run the minute that ill-fated sliver of hope had slid into her consciousness but the old Rory had reared her head, the Rory that wanted to see the good in even the unredeemable, the same Rory that had slid willingly into the morass of Jess' neurosis and self destructive tendencies, the Rory that had listened to Dean's empty promises and heard the depth of emotion that existed only in the recesses of her own ill-conceived hopes. She had known what Logan was when she offered him a no regrets pact that promised that both of their hearts would stay clear of the wreckage. She had truly believed that she could do it, that she could be that carefree, explore the world and learn the lessons it has to offer her kind of girl for all of about five minutes.

Then she had kissed him. She should have turned around after the jolt had all but knocked her clean off her feet but she hadn't she had wanted to walk on that ledge, look down at the abyss of danger and the realm of the illicit she had wanted to play at the high stakes table...it all sounded great, the adrenaline rush of a lifetime until you considered the flip side of a high which was the pit of despair... or worse this purgatory trapped halfway between worlds with no clear escape. She had realized to late that the only people who could successfully play at the high stakes game of love were the ones with nothing to lose.

He was supposed to have met her twenty minutes and two cups of coffee ago and yet she still sat here alone with nothing but the dregs and the crumbs and the new biography of Dr. Seuss as company. It was a group of playmates that had become all too common of late.

He lost track of time, he ran into someone he knew, he had to drag some blonde into a back hallway and have his way with her, his excuses and her mental extrapolations were legion at this point. She took a deep breath, what was she doing here? Waiting, pining, like she was some lonely desperate social outcast who had nothing better to do with her life than wait for him to recall that she existed. She felt the beginning of a slow burn that worked its way up to a simmer in mere moments as she slammed the cup down on the table with more force than was strictly necessary and put her hands on the table to push herself up. She was done waiting. She was done playing by his rules. She was done with him if he didn't change his errant ways.

A hand landed on her shoulder and held her in place not allowing her to rise. "Leaving so soon Ace?"

The look she gave him would have withered the most vigorous of vines. He widened his eyes slightly in mock fear silently damning himself and the fact that he had forgotten to wear his watch again. That look did not bode well for what was supposed to have been a nice lighthearted little study break. "Usually angry works for you but now I'm going to have to say that's not a good look."

She seethed silently but set her teeth and valiantly struggled to keep her voice to cutting and dry, better to slice clean and leave him to bleed once she had walked away "Probably because angry was a milepost I passed about ten minutes ago and it was nothing but a blur."

He nodded in understating. "Ah. Then I'm guessing more coffee right now would not be a good idea for my health then?"

She barely heard the teasing words "What was it this time Logan?"

"What was what?" he asked it with a nonchalantly blank expression despite knowing full well where this conversation was veering.

"The excuse for why you left me sitting here for the last twenty minutes?"

He shrugged and sent her his patented sheepish little boy look complete with puppy dog eyes that had been known to reduce most girls to a giggling pile of mush, it didn't bode well that her only reaction was to cross her arms and increase the tempo of her foot tapping surreptitiously under the coffee table. "Would you believe I ran into Finn and Colin?"

"Did you?" Her tone spoke of patent disbelief and he felt his jaw tighten slightly in defense.

He removed his hand from her shoulder and dropped into the seat across from her. He

didn't like to be questioned, liked even less the voice in the back of his mind that was speaking in louder and louder tones of late and saying that perhaps she had every right to be angry. Just because none of his previous female companions had taken exception to his rather fluid concept of time didn't mean that she was wrong. In fact there was a sneaky little corner of his psyche that thought perhaps he was doing it on purpose. Keeping her at arms length, perpetually on the edge of irritation or frustration rather than letting her get close, get comfortable in his life, in his heart.

More importantly he was coming to suspect that it was his own level of comfort with her that had him running scared. There had never been a girl in his experience who had so quickly and completely gotten to him. And she had gotten to him, he was past being able to deny that, he kept throwing up barriers and somehow she slithered around them within the blink of an eye. He had always been an accomplished escape artist when it came to emotional entanglements but now he found himself in a unique predicament. Tied neatly and securely with bonds made by his own hand. Desire had at last won the battle against fear and now he was plagued with an entirely new form of terror as he looked at the darkening blue of those laser eyes.

All his life he'd been looking for something, never satisfied with all that he had, all that glittered and was gold but left nothing but bitter ashes in his mouth. He hadn't known what it was until she kissed him. He had come to crave the honeyed taste of her, sweet and clean and real on his tongue. For once he held something fragile in his hands that he wanted to protect, something that he didn't want to see twisted and destroyed. Someone that he wanted to keep whole even at a cost to him self.

It gave him pause. He had never been an altruistic person. He had long ago placed his own well being on the top of his list of priorities and hadn't wavered despite obstacles thrown in his path to keep that one shining goal of self-preservation in his sights. Then one fine day he had awakened to a stark new reality and found his world inhabited by a stranger. She was there, in his thoughts, in his mind's eyes, in that secret place he denied with all his might that held the vulnerable piece of himself that most never got close enough to see. She was there and she was holding that crystalline shard in her hands, she could break him.

He dropped his eye to the wreckage of her vigil; an empty coffee cup, crumbs of some unidentified pastry. Then he looked up at her, saw the flicker of tiny muscles in the tightly clenched jaw and he knew with absolute certainty the thing that he had feared now for weeks. She would break him, one delicate inch at a time she would crumble his barriers until he stood naked and unprotected before her and then she would see him as he truly was without the pretty window treatment. His fear, his real nightmare began at that second, the moment when she saw the reality of his weakness, his faults, his insecurities, the secret things that made him tick and kept him running, never satisfied, always looking for that thing that was missing... that thing that she had shown him and that now he feared he could not live without. He feared above all that she would see what he saw, that he didn't deserve her, that she should run as far and as fast as she could away from him and thank her lucky stars that she saw the truth before it was too late.

It was only a matter of time before that bitter culmination and he thought it was better to walk away now, to let it become a might have been rather than a tale told to the wary to warn them from the gates of the garden of Eden, that deceptive illusion of perfection that up close brought only heartache and sorrow.

The only problem with this little mental journey of his was that despite all the warnings screamed by a well honed self preservation instinct he wanted the illusion, he wanted what might reside beyond the illusion. That very tiny chance that there was something to be gained by putting your heart on the line and that the quicksilver slide of happiness that beckoned might in fact be worth the risk.

He looked down at his hands trying to formulate some sort of response to her question but she beat him to it.

"Nothing to say? No new half-truths and feeble excuses to feed me? Well good, I've got a class to get to anyway." With a look of mingled disgust and disenchantment she rose from her seat turning half away from him and began to put her books back in her bag with quick jerky movements.

His words stopped her "Wait Rory. Just sit down, have another cup of coffee...preferably decaf and we'll talk. " He tried for a light note but fell substantially short.

Her shoulders slumped slightly and she looked at him over her shoulder. She looked at him for a long moment that seemed to stretch in interminable length between them across that ever-widening chasm. Her eyes had lost their angry sheen and his heart clenched a little as he saw them fill with a sort of sad acceptance. "Why?" it was a half whispered question.

"I don't want you to leave." It was a bigger truth than even he was ready to admit. He didn't want her to leave him...ever.

She shook her head slightly as if debating silently with her self and then in one smooth motion she slung her bag across her shoulder and leaned across the coffee table towards him. Her lips brushed his cheek and then she spoke with a lingering regret. "Despite what your daddy tells you, even you can't always get what you want."

He watched her go and he felt a little drop in his chest. The fall of another brick from that wall inside him. He cared about her and he wasn't ready to lose her not this easily, not without a fight. Only he didn't know how to fight himself and win. He muttered to himself as he slumped back in the chair and lay his head back to stare at the ceiling berating himself for another stupid move.

"So, now what genius?"


End file.
